i have the best friends ever

i have been thinking this recently for multiple reasons, but given the amount of whining i have done about not finding anything, i was very touched by the following IMs:

jack: hey sweetie - one of my fellow interns was frustrated like you are/were and she said one of the lawyers told her not to worry - they give us the problems that they could not find any answers for themselves - so it is supposed to be nigh on impossible
jack: be good to yourself - we love you

i almost cried!

maybe now i'll let myself go to sleep tonight w/o looking more. maybe if i go to sleep at a normal hour, then i will be able to go in early in the morning! maybe i'll be able to hit 9 hours tomorrow! haha, this is funny b/c this morning i woke up after the time i had intended to be at the office. you have to love it when you leave your bedroom at 8:51 and you are in your office at 9:00. however, this leaves you very little incentive to wake up early.

it would be an accomplishment to weigh 800 pounds, wouldn't it?

see, as everyone else lets their weight creep slowly up over the course of the summer on tasty firm dinners, i have decided to pull out the big guns. my firm doesn't take us out to tasty firm dinners all the time. (which is fine.) and i haven't yet gone to the grocery store yet. which is only partly my fault b/c one of my roommates has commandeered the entirety of the fridge with her food products. i have managed to sneak in some insulin and a block of cheese, but that's it so far.

anyways, b/c of these things i have to find somewhere to eat in the evenings that is not really expensive and isn't somewhere you don't feel uncomfortable eating by yourself and is still open when i wake up from my nap (yes, i am pathetic. no question about this.) and so on the days that i eat dinner, i am eating at 5 guys. of course, even on the days i don't eat dinner, i'm not eating any better. last night i had a green tea frappuccino for dinner.

so if the next time you see me, i can't fit thru doorways, you'll know what happened.

my really truly ideal job

i do know exactly what it is.

wandering around an office all day making small talk with people.

it would boost office morale. and i also have a whole theory about how having one person to waste everyone's time when someone needs a break is really a way to increase overall office productivity as well. b/c then those who needed a break wouldn't be wandering the halls just wasting the time of those who were actually being productive. rather, they would just get in touch with me and i would provide that service. and i would be amazing at it.

i actually held this job before returning to law school and now i have to figure out how to hold it again. i'm not sure it's possible. as a private attorney, billable hours would really get in the way. i had a really good gig back in the day and even made good money for it. god, i loved that job. i wonder if there is a comparable position anywhere out there. maybe lexis rep. today truly is the day of the lexis rep dream.

baby steps

i figure it's a step in the right direction that i only had to flee the office at 5:15 today, as opposed to about 2pm, like i wanted all last week. i'm almost to leaving the office at a time when a normal person leaves their office! i mean, not a normal attorney. but baby steps.

and today i even sucked it up and went to tell the attorney that i couldn't find anything on topic for this project. so now i'm looking some more. not that things are appearing out of nowhere. and, of course, i've not quite figured out what it is i'm supposed to be doing now. BECAUSE THERE ISN'T ANYTHING OUT THERE!

and i'm terrified that this is all my fault b/c i suck, but the evidence points to my doing things the right way and still not finding anything. the lexis man came in this morning to give us a "refresher course." except that every time he opened his mouth to make a suggestion, i finished the sentence and told him i had already done it and knew the billable implications to it. ok, that sounds obnoxious, but i have spent an awful lot of time in lexis training this year. so in the end, i concluded that i could have taught the firm's lexis refresher course. with my eyes closed. and gagged. i could have taught it in morse code, rapping out on someone's desk. and i don't even know morse code. [actually, lexis rep is one of those jobs i think i might like, and it wouldn't be an utter waste to have a law degree. so maybe today's interaction was worthwhile.] so as frustrating as it is, maybe there isn't an on point answer here either.

i swear that one of these days soon i will quit posting about my shortcomings regarding legal research. hopefully. b/c it's even driving me crazy.

i think i'm in love

with this guy. he had me at the may 29 post, but i kept reading and i still loved him. then i thought i'd check out the archives, which are sparse, but it didn't take me long into february to realize that lexi would want to be his friend too. i just don't know how we could go wrong with this kid.

at this moment i am hoping that the feature that lets people know when others have linked to a post on your blog does not also alert them to the fact that you have linked to their blog in general. if it does, hi chappy! i'm a fan.

[addendum: a few minutes after posting this, i decided i had to let chappy know how much i enjoyed his blog. so i posted a comment. which automatically links to my blog. i am smoooooth. yes, i suppose i could have deleted this post and no one would have ever been the wiser, but you know i don't do things like that. however, i would point you to my post a few days ago about what i mean by "love." that is all. i realllllly should go do that research now. curses on the internet and all of its tasty delights!]

shoes

so i went the other day to buy a pair of shoes. a specific pair of shoes i had seen while in BTR with my mom. but i was unable to find them and after scouring all of the stores in pentagon city for a pair of navy flats, i was feeling very dejected. but then i went to the final shoe store and i purchased two pairs of shoes and this made me very happy. but there are funny-ish stories about both pairs of shoes.

the first is that i bought a pair of shoes identical to a pair i already own. i really liked them and i was convinced that the heel height was different or that the shoe covered more toe than the other pair or something. but when i got home, it is clear that the two shoes are indistinguishable from one another, except that one pair has been worn. but that's the thing. it's a pair that has been worn to death and i have not been able to wear them since about january b/c they need to be taken to a cobbler to be re-heeled b/c the combination of my 800 pounds and my furious walking really will beat the bejeezus out of a pair of pointy heels and now i'm walking on nails. but i haven't made it to a cobbler in months, so maybe this is the answer to that. or maybe i will get them re-heeled and then i can keep a pair at home and a pair at work and really, that is perfect. but never let it be said that i do not know what i like.

the second pair of shoes i got was this pair. but what i wanted to buy initially was this pair. after i bought them, i figured i would go scour the internet to see if i should return them and set about trying to find the initial pair. and when i found them, i laughed. b/c there is a bow on them! now, this won't make any sense to most of you. but if you look thru my shoes, particularly those that may be worn to work, you will notice a striking trend. which is that they all have bows. or nearly all. like probably 8 of 10 have bows. so the point of this is that you are someone looking to market a pair of shoes to me, put a small bow on them. and your sale will be made.

this is one of those posts that is almost so stupid it's embarassing to post. but now i've typed it. and included links. so post it i shall. keep any mocking comments to yourself please. perhaps this is a good post to mark the beginning of the new blog title--i'm not stupid, i'm just simple. very apt indeed.

36.8 MPG!!

i didn't have another forum in which to shout this from the rooftops, but i was quite pleased. that is good gas mileage, right? 36.8! i used to roll my eyes when my dad did this, but then when i got a car with good gas mileage, i started doing it myself. and this tank was about the best driving ever. all long distance highway w/ minimal stopping and going. 36.8! yay for my car!!

oh crap

so basically, every day when i leave work, i think that i should go home and try to research some more on my current question, since i have not been able to find anything and i figure that researching in bed would really be better than researching at a desk anyways. but of course i don't. but now there is a 3 day weekend and i have been on this project for a day and have found nothing, but we were out of the office friday and then tomorrow too, so i feel that my tuesday i should have stuff and i don't and i'm in cville and even tho the library is closed, well i could still use lexis at home on this couch that i love so much and well, i have spent all day on it anyways. but not researching.

but none of that was the point. so i explain to my mom how badly this is all going and how i keep not being able to find anything on these questions to which it seems like there surely should be answers out there and some case precedent b/c they seem like questions that would come up pretty often. so my mom says that maybe there really aren't answers. and proceeds to list for me other people we know who are currently entangled in THE EXACT SAME LEGAL PREDICAMENT I HAVE JUST TOLD HER ABOUT! IT PROBABLY DOES NOT BODE WELL THAT MY MOTHER CAN LIST MULTIPLE FAMILY FRIENDS GOING THRU THIS SAME CASE RIGHT NOW AND I CANNOT FIND ANY CASE HISTORY FROM EITHER DC OR VIRGINIA IN THE LAST 150 YEARS!

so the question now confronting me--to deal with this now or to go to bed? hmmmm.

oh hurrah!

good new indeed, my friends!! it is the return of lextacular!!! a bleak period of despair in our history has concluded and lexi has come to terms with the fact that she cannot be silence, or the voices get too loud and they keep aaron awake at night, which is a bad idea b/c he needs to be rested when he goes to work to bring home all the bacon. so yes, lexi is posting again! yaaayyyy!!!!

crazy drivers

so i was just at the corner of ivy and copely, about to make a right turn into the righthand lane of ivy when the man in the lefthand lane of ivy, still approaching the light, started honking at me. so initially, i feel a bit of remorse. only not only was i not in his lane, but he was running a red light at the time. this is one of those times when i wish my car had signals in addition to the left and right turn signals. i frequently need the u-turn signal. many times i would like a "oops, that was my bad" signal. but for this occassion, i needed a "you're the jerk, not me" signal. not like i would ever use it. i still don't know what my horn sounds like.

what probably truly is an unhealthy love

so the other day someone asked me what a firm husband is. and other people have asked me that in the past. and since i mentioned it a couple of days ago, and haven't had much to say lately b/c i am too busy sleeping the 16 hours a day i am not at work, i figure i will address that here. yes, i am just going to cut and paste my explanatory email here. only one person has read that email (ok, 2. i forwarded it to saunders b/c this is now what i do, now that i'm one of those people who can't do anything w/o help) and he doesn't read this (and neither does saunders), so you wouldn't even know that if i didn't tell you, except i am always concerned that it will be very clear from the way it is written (b/c i really do this quite often) and well you're the person reading my blog anyways, and i call the shots here.

re: I still want to know who or what your firm husband is.

well that's part of the problem, silly, i don't know who my firm husband is either. so i "fall in love" with people very easily. i say that in quotes b/c i obviously haven't fallen in love with them. but i like most people. and i have a very good adoring face. i've been using it since high school to act over-infatuated with boys as a way of drawing laughs from friends. actually, that may all be irrelevant to the firm husband stuff. well, maybe it's relevant as background. but i decide that i love all sorts of people. i loved 4 of my 5 professors this semester, just as an example. i don't know if other people have firm husbands. something tells me they don't. i think that you can "love" people from many different firms, and you can even love many people from one firm, and you can have multiple potential firm husbands, but you can only have one firm husband. obviously from the firm to which you are going. i guess if you are splitting the summer, you can have two. i actually had the equivalent of a firm husband when i was interviewing for a job out of undergrad, but it didn't work out so well for me b/c i didn't get an offer. but i had planned the rest of my life with beau bradstreet within approximately 2 minutes of meeting him. i still mourn the fact that i didn't get that job and my future was so cruelly snatched from me by the people at greenwich associates. anyways, i guess what it boils down to is that your firm husband is the man at your firm that you have decided you will marry. even tho you clearly won't. i picked this guy b/c we were dreadfully obnoxious to one another right off the bat. i asked him to explain securities law to me b/c mimi said she thought i would like it and he mocked me and i replied with biting remarks and on it went. which is how i usually am, but you don't really expect it at law firm wooing events where everyone is to be on their best behavior and you feel comfortable enough to act like this. which i think is partially a credit to my firm. anyways, sparks flew. i'm not sure he noticed them. maybe they were the sparks of everyone else in the room grinding to a halt and desperately wishing they hadn't given me an offer already. oh well. whatever. but i have not met anyone who rang any bells as being this guy and i have just searched the web page photos and i don't see anyone who i think is him and i am heartbroken. what if he was the only man that might ever love me and now he's gone to fried frank or clifford chance or arnold and porter or what is that one in dupont where the people are supposed to be pretty obnoxious and i used to know the kid who was a paralegal there who was friend's with liesl's friend? well that one.

another unhealthy love

i actually don't know anything about healthy love. but today i reacquainted with a love that i had not until today realized was unhealthy.

that love is target. i have now been 3 times in 1 week, even tho i don't even live close to a target. i can't exactly figure out why i went today, but i am glad i did. last time, i bought a cheap croquet set. i had been wanting to buy a bocce set for like a year, but it turns out they are expensive, so i did not, but then at target they have these things on sale for $15 and i decided that a croquet set was better than bocce for parties, so i bought that. but then at jim's BBQ, jen was saying she would like bocce. and i figured that for $15, which is like 12 minutes worth of work, well i could buy a bocce set. i was also looking for tank tops, but they never have those in Ms, and yet somehow i wound up buying more shirts too. i never know how that happens. and to be honest, it happens every time i go to target. but none of those are even where the unhealthy comes in. tho they're probably more unhealthy than the next thing, b/c they actually involve real money.

THE DOLLAR SPOT WAS 75% OFF!!! YES, THAT MEANS THAT EVERYTHING IN THE DOLLAR SPOT WAS JUST 25¢! oooooh, the things i purchased. to be fair, i am sending someone a care package this summer, and 25¢ items are great fillers. and at the BBQ the other day, jim didn't know what the little things you skewer into the ends of your corn on the cob were, so those were also 25 cents! that's amazing! so he and jen will be receiving a set of those in the mail in a couple of days. it will cost me more to send them than to buy them. i probably should have bought them 6 sets, instead of just 2, b/c that still would have only cost $1.50. but anyways. and if you need an apple corer or a potato masher, well just let me know b/c i bought a few of them. 25¢ PEOPLE! WHAT WAS I TO DO!??! JUST LEAVE THEM THERE?!?!?

oh, and there were fireworks-type things (those little champagne poppers and the pop-its that you throw on the ground) for just $1 and i thought those would also be good filler for the care package, but then i was worried that it might be unwise to send those thru the mail and this is why i keep saunders on retainer. i called and it turns out you can't send them thru the mail. when i asked how bad it would be to do so, he said "federal offense," so i guess those will not be making the box.

ok, that is all for the target trip. god, i love target. i love it sooooo much.

do other girls do this?

you're sitting around, you've got nothing better to do, you're feeling skinny, so you try on all of your formal dresses?

well that's what i just did. and i've already got three dresses i'm debating between for PILA next year. tho there is always the possibility that i will buy a new one. the first is the dress i wore to my 11th grade christmas dance. i know that sounds weird, but i still kinda love it. the problem is that it might be ugly. i would need someone else to rule on that b/f i wore it. it's kind of like a green lace with glitter all over it. i also wore it to a costume dance in college where i was a rose bush. the second dress is the one i wore first year to PILA, but i figure that about 95% of people didn't see me that night, since i left within about 4 minutes of the event starting. and it's got an empire waist with a bow. you know how i feel about those. the final option is one i bought with my mom the same time i bought the dresses i've worn to the last to barristers'. it was on sale and it's black with a bit of sparkles and it makes me look skinny, but it had a hole in it and my mom sewed it up, but that means that there is a slight malfunction on the butt that looks a bit odd. so i know that no one asked, but there you have it.

getting laura a man and/or a job

i need to research, but i am tired and i am bad at research. at the reception today there was a lawyer talking about how he doesn't like to wash and iron his own shirts, and i didn't see a ring on his finger, and i wanted to offer to marry him right there. i'm not kidding. for like 5 minutes i grappled with how to offer myself to him in marriage. of course there were two problems with this. other than the fact that it was probably a bad idea in general. the first is that i was the one who had started the convo about not being good at housework. but i can do laundry! but i didn't think it was wise to start to explain that. the second problem is that i figured it wasn't a good idea to offer to be his personal assistant and to explain that that is a job i would love to have. since i am hoping they will hire me as a lawyer soon. or a secretary. it also reminded me that i have not yet seen my firm husband, i don't think. hmmmm. now i will have to stalk him online, rather than research.

the people, they love me

i sent 9 emails to co-workers today (1 to my secretary and 1 to the summers listserve) and received 4 replies, either verbal or written, solely made to comment on the funniness of my emails. well, not to toot my own horn, but i am a great emailer.

i also knew my secretary and i would get along like peas and carrots when i discovered that she (1) keeps chocolate at her desk, and (2) everyone calls her "crazy mary." this was further confirmed when she sent me an email explaining why she hadn't yet dropped by my office and she concluded with, "Forgiveth me please." i think she knew we would get along like peas and carrots when i concluded my email reply with, "Consider yourself forgaveth." oooh crazy mary, the days ahead of us will be good ones. (interestingly, the summer coordinator said they assigned me to her b/c they figured i could hold my own with crazy mary. i am not sure what to make of this remark, but there is probably no denying that it is true. so i guess i'll consider it insightful.)

the beer and pizza test

so they were telling us yesterday that when they're considering offers, they ask if you're someone they would like to go out and have beer and pizza with. we had a firm-wide reception for the summers today, after our first full day of working on our projects, and i have decided that i am totally someone with whom these people would like to share beer and pizza. however, i am not so sure i am someone with whom they would like to work. i mean, yeah, if they just need someone in meetings with clients to make small talk and to attentively take notes at meetings. but if you want someone to provide legal analysis, well i'm still not so sure i'm your girl. hopefully i'll feel differently about that after tomorrow.

button-up or button-down?

i was talking to two people about wearing button-up shirts and they were both giving me odd looks. i guess it's one of those things i say that i wasn't aware was odd, but it turns out it is. i would have never even thought to say button-down.

billable hours! eek!

so i am aware that i shouldn't post about work stuff this summer, but i think that i can still post about inane things that just so happen to be about work, but i have been made very paranoid about the blog and the things that get out there, so hopefully i will censor myself appropriately, but if you happen to see anything that i should not have posted, will you tell me? please?

so today i received my first work assignment. it's for an M&A project and involves contract clauses! could you imagine anything more poorly suited for me as a first assignment? (this is ok to say b/c i explained this to the associate who assigned the project to me. she explained that she used to not have any idea what she was doing, and now she's down to not understanding about 50% of what she's doing, so i figure that's a good thing to know.) so now i figure that i will screw around at home for a few hours tonight trying to teach myself all of the contract law that michael p. dooley failed to teach me last year. not that i think having a contracts professor who taught us contracts law would actually answer this question at all, but at least the word "contract" wouldn't make me quiver with fear.

but none of that was what i was going to talk about.

billable hours. i am screwed. it turns out that i cannot refrain from sending emails and replying to emails. and i can spend an hour looking for something on the internet and sending email and all of a sudden 30 minutes has passed. that's "0.5" to those of you who are billing hours. so in addition to not being sure i can do the work, i don't know how i'm ever going to meet the billable hours. but mostly i'm jealous b/c rada has a billing code for "responding to email - nonbillable administrative time." we don't have one of those! i need one of those! how great would that be?!?! so i figure i'll just make up a code and start using that. i wonder how long it'll take for them to notice that i'm making up billing codes. actually, based on how seriously we take our billing, i doubt that would fly for long. and based on how seriously we take our billing, that would probably be more detrimental to the possibility of my getting an offer than jumping in a river in my underwear. well, maybe not. but equally so.

ok, that is all for now. i think i want a diet sprite. and a pop-tart. is that like dinner?

it really is kinda absurd

so i just went to drinks after our first day with one of my co-workers, and we were both basically in awe of what they are paying us. i mean, i don't know if you guys know it, but $2500 a week is ABSURD! absolutely absurd. i should quit feeling like i can't have air conditioning. (good thing, since once again this summer i live with over-air conditioners).

but the thing is that there is FREE DIET COKE! and i have compared with the other summers' offices and my office is the closest to the free diet coke! i am the big winner. i have warned them that the path b/t my office and the machine may be worn thin very shortly. what baffles me is that one firm i had interviewed with specifically mentioned this, so when i was deciding on this firm, i decided to ask about perks. AND NO ONE MENTIONED THIS! lexi says that maybe these people are so spoiled they do not think of free diet coke as a perk. and to that i say, if i ever cease to think of free diet coke as a perk, i would like you (whoever you are) to slap me and remind me of how good i have it. the other option was to shoot me, but that does seem a little drastic.

sharing the joy

so i was wandering thru blogs b/c what else would i have to do at 1:30 am the night before i start my job? and this is truly delightful. it is 6 minutes long, but it is worth keeping tuned in til the end.

SOS

so where do you all suggest that i could fly on American Airlines, pretty much any time this summer, for about $200? doesn't work for flying out to LA or Vegas at the end of the summer, for flying to Chicago to visit, or for flying to Boston for the retreat unless the firm wants to let me buy my own stupidly overpriced ticket and then reimburse me. sounds like a deal for them, doesn't it? so where else does it make sense for me to fly to this summer and AA isn't going to screw me on price? how come i found such a great fare for the flight to Boston for the reunion on this airline, but they generally seem to be ridiculously overpriced? bastards.

is it because of contracts?

and do we really charge business travelers more than we do personal travelers? i mean, this can't be an official thing, right? so if a business traveler happened to just book his own flight off the internet, he could get the same cheap fare? but since the company does the booking, they get screwed and pay twice the fare? this still doesn't make any sense to me, but that's my guess.

another thing i don't get

so this is all brought on by the fact that i have a plane ticket that i am trying to cancel/change w/o getting screwed, and i would accept the blame except i don't think it's my fault, i think it's the fault of my college friends, who suck. tho maybe it's my fault for being friends with them.

so we have a firm retreat in boston two weekends later and the firm is getting the tickets, but i was thinking that maybe since i can't come up with anything else to do with this ticket, i would at least look at that possibility. unfortunately, things are hindered by the fact that i am restricted to flying on one airline. which seems to suck.

but none of that is the point of this post. so when the firm was asking us which airport we would rather fly out of, they gave us the options of IAD and BWI, but we can't use DCA b/c the costs are still prohibitive. but using the same dates and times, i can get a round trip BWI-BOS for $118 and a round trip DCA-BOS for $130. and i'm going to guess that $12 is not actually prohibitive for the firm. i'm actually going to guess that the $385 ticket to which i would be restricted if trying to fly on the one airline forwhich my other ticket is valid is not actually prohibitive to a firm either. i would guess that even tho i am balking at that cost, that is probably what we will all be flying out of BWI or IAD for. so what i don't get is why this is the case if there are clearly better fares out there. i'm sure there is a perfectly good explanation for this, but this is the sort of thing that doesn't add up in laura-land, so please explain if you can. (lexi, since you're about the only person reading this and it doesn't make sense in lexi-land either, maybe you could ask aaron and just send me his answer.)

tonight's musings

curses on saunders, who has somehow got me watching hours of “the deadliest catch” on the discovery channel, even tho i don’t have any particular affinity for it. well, actually i have decided that this would be a great profession for me. see, i decided recently that i would like to do something that the world needs, and the last thing that the world needs is more lawyers. now, true, the world probably doesn’t actually need to eat crab. but it sure does like it. and so it needs people to catch the crab. well, i’m not sure if there may be crab farms. but i’m going to guess that the world needs people to catch crab if they are going to eat it. also, i like crab. furthermore, i like cold, i like water, and i would love working with men who said, “call me crazy, maybe i am a little bit.” so i think this would be a great profession. and yes i realize that this is a dreadfully dangerous profession and there is the perpetual risk of death. BUT i think falling into freezing seas, while you’re already in at least phase 1 hypothermia (which seems to be how these men live 4/5 of their lives), would be a pretty good way to go. so that doesn’t really bother me. i think i’m a natural for this job. but the problem is that i figure i won’t be able to break into it b/c i am a girl. and also i learned that most of the smaller boats sell their catch allotment to the larger boats, so there is a scarcity of jobs and there would be no place for me to cut my teeth, so to speak. anyways. it was just a thought.

but all of that is irrelevant to the point this post was supposed to make, which was brought on by this show that i have now been watching for far too long. which is about animals and eating. i suppose that what it boils down to is do animals eat for taste? b/c the guy was given the sea lion in the water a fish and the sea lion was very happy to get it. now do you think that the sea lion thinks that raw fish is tasty (which is fine) or do you think that he just likes getting food w/o having to expend any effort (like college students and free food. for free, i’d take raw fish.) or maybe they just don’t know what else to do when someone offers them food. but lots of animals beg for food even tho they don’t really need it to survive. sometimes i could imagine this being b/c the food is tasty, like with dog treats or even with the little food pellets you give animals at the zoo, b/c those are at least a starch and i equate starches with tastiness, but not raw fish with tastiness. but i am not a sea lion, so i really don’t know. do you see what i’m asking here?

productive, counter-productive

so i'm trying to delete emails from my sentbox. i am very good about deleting from my inbox, but i am an avid sender and i've always thought that deleting from the sentbox is the only way to really keep the clutter down. unfortunately, this is a pain in the ass. also, it turns out that it's more difficult to do. for starters, i figure that if i delete everything i get, but i reply to nearly all of what i get, keeping my replies is a good way to have some remnant of the emails i receive, if they're funny or whatever, but not funny or whatever enough to justify being saved on their own. but the second problem is that i truly do love the things i say in email. i'm not sure you would have ever guessed this. so, in addition to deleting sent emails, i wind up finding things that i have to forward back to people, meaning that there is now another email in my sentbox. plus the fact that i don't like to delete them in general. i think that the sheer volume of email i send, particularly to the same person w/in a short period of time, says something in and of itself and that is lost when you delete any of the drivel. my drivel is great.

and you know what i'm going to do, don't you? i'm going to give you a sample of the drivel. actually, this email isn't drivel and maybe it isn't even all that funny, but i am amused by the fact that this is an email i sent a professor--


Prof. XXX—

If it’s possible, can I ask to have a pass today? I’ve done the reading, but I’m also in my week of reading the 25-page memos for the first years and am about as haggard as I’ve ever been. I’m not sure you want me helping to make any points to the class. And, to be honest, the concept of the tax shelter completely evades me. I’m generally a law-abiding citizen, but the IRS should certainly not worry about me on this one.

Thanks,
Laura

i know you were all wondering

well, at least i was.

so, i asked my family whether this was funny or not funny. you may recall that no one here really thought it was funny, while i found it to be the funniest thing ever uttered by a human being. well, my mom giggled heartily, my sister didn't get it (she found it funny after it had been explained to her that stalin was russian), and my father found it moderately amusing. so clearly this is a genetic thing. (these are my half-sister and step-father.)

fighting a never-ending war

so tonight is the one day a year, i would allow someone to visit my bedroom. of course, it remains to be seen if they would be allowed thru my kitchen or my living room, the only two ways to get to my bedroom.

i am cleaning. this happens very rarely. generally it is my mother doing it. and doing this reminds me how much i hate it. which is partially b/c of how fruitless it is.

basically, me cleaning consists of my picking up some sort of spray cleaning product, applying approximately 4x the cleaning product necessary for the task at hand, until it is pooling on the surface, and then i tackle it with handfuls of paper towels. and no matter what the surface is, or what room we are in, we are generally attacking one enemy--dust. but here is the thing (and i do not mean to discourage others who are cleaning. if you are cleaning and easily discouraged, you may want to avert your eyes from the following sentence)--the dust WILL return! and the places to which the dust will return are just flabbergasting! i once heard that dust is overwhelmingly dead skin cells and i thought that if i left the house, then i wouldn't be around sloughing off skin and there wouldn't be dust. but no! it's still there! it's like my neighbors just drop off their dead skin cells so that there will be dust in my home. and that's what makes this so disheartening. i mean, it is absolutely disgusting in here. it cannot be denied. it must be cleaned. even i know that it must be cleaned, which is when you know that most people probably would have cleaned two months ago. but i won't even be living here for the next 3 months! what's the point? when i return, the dust will be back! and then my mom is coming just a week or two after that, so maybe i shouldn't even try.

anyways, back to tackling the bathroom.

paaaaa-thetic

perhaps you have noticed that i like to share with you how pathetic i am. i like to show you, my readers, that you could be far worse off. so here is what i am doing right now. i have to pack everything i need for the summer and clean an apartment that has not been cleaned in months, all in the next 4 hours. i was doing very well at this for about 8 minutes (during which time i started to wonder how thick a layer of dust on a pair of shoes means you’re never going to wear them again). then i sat down to check email. well, that was over an hour ago. so now, here i am on my couch. i am very hungry. but i won’t move to get food. i figure that at some point i will just quit being hungry. or my battery will run out at some point. that’s really what i’m relying on. and my feet are freezing. but getting socks to warm them would involve moving. we’re not doing that, don’t be silly. instead, i am sitting here and the only productive thing i could say i am doing is that i am performing further case work on my analysis as to whether chuzzle is a game of skill or not. (the theory that chuzzle is not a game of skill continues to hold up under rigorous study.) and i’m just waiting for my computer battery to die. but i’m starting to think that maybe i won’t move when that happens. actually, i could probably just take a nap or watch tv or any number of other things. oh no. it’s just gotten worse. my purse is right next to me on the couch. it has food and socks in it. i may never leave. if i don’t show up to the party tonight, send someone to look for me on my couch, subsisting off of a year old granola bar, a set of poptarts, and half a bag of chocolate eggs. no doubt that’s where i’ll be.

another exam story

some of you wanted more exam stories. well, this is more of a reflection. but it's what you're getting. so i just took my last exam and it was a lot in too little time. at least i didn't stare at it and have no idea what to do, so that's at least a start.

but now for the part that isn't really any good, which i am going to talk about here since the people i would be ok with talking about this with don’t want to talk about it and the people who probably would (read: smart people) aren’t the people i want to talk to about it.

so the fact pattern we had was one of those things where there is SO much and you start by sketching thru some stuff, but then you don’t really get to finish b/c there’s no time and you have these half completed sentences and ideas and you don’t really have time to work thru everything. or even much of anything.

and then, this is my favorite technique on these exams—i dismiss all points by saying, “he would have a case if _x_, but since _y_, then too bad for him.”

there are two problems with this. 1) you’ll notice that it doesn’t really address anything. 2) y is the legal conclusion i had time to address back in paragraph one. the problem is that i’m never quite sure that y is right. so by the end of the essay, i may very well have made one inaccurate conclusion and then based everything else on that. it’s always about the third time i say this that i start to wonder if y is right. it seemed ok, until it became the basis for everything else. then it starts to seem verrrry suspect.

in this particular instance, my doubt about y was not helped by the fact that i forced molly to take one question after the exam. so i asked, “y?” and she was like, hm. as in that wasn't something that had crossed her mind at all. which is not a good sign if it’s the ONLY POINT I MADE IN 2 HOURS WORTH OF ESSAY WRITING. ok, so that’s a bit of an exaggeration. but still. probably not a good sign.

my latest ailment

so i have another gimpy ailment that i think must be the result of some sort of trauma (give me credit for having ruled out cancer.)

my right index finger hurts all the time. it's the worst at the knuckle where it connects to my hand and i think that it might not actually hurt anywhere else, but since any pressure at all on the finger affects the joint where it connects to the hand, that doesn’t help much. it started a couple of months ago (at that phase i thought it was arthritis), but it is has gotten increasingly worse in the last week and it is really bad now. so that my right hand is basically always in pain and when i wake up in the morning, i can barely use my right hand. so i took it to my usual team of experts.

some of my friends think it’s from typing, but i think that’s crazy talk. tho it turns out that a lot of people are having problems with carpal tunnel and things like that, but i just don't think that would result in pain in this one finger.

secondly, i went to the big guns--my mom. she thinks it's the typing too. but it was her next remark that really unsettled me--"You know I can't use that finger hardly at all now--joint sticks." sweet. so this runs in the family too? this is what i have to look forward to? but i take issue w/ her findings anyways b/c i still just can't believe this is related to typing and b/c i figure that my mom has 30 years on me. i mean, we all expect our bodies to start falling apart in our 50s, but i'm only 26! i'm no spring chicken, but i shouldn't be having perpetual searing pain in my right hand that precludes me from using it! at 26! that sucks! even if you say i'm pushing 30, that still seems premature.

so finally i consulted derek as an expert b/c i figured that he has a lot of experience with people typing a lot. i figured that if anyone would know about the kind of damage that could result from lots of typing, it would be someone who works with computers and talks all day to people who use their computers relentlessly. he's totally qualified. and he concurs that this does not sound like a pain from typing.

a few of my friends have had MRIs lately and i have decided that this is exactly what i need to diagnose my pain. i don't actually really know what am MRI is, except that it does seem financially impractical for this task. but i've never had an MRI and you never know when the occassion for one is going to come up again. so that's what i've got my heart set on now.

which kinda reminds me of the medical experiment i had my heart set on last time i went home, which wound up being a real disappointment. and is a story i won't go into today. you are spared.

speaking of that one remaining exam

i have recently realized how awful it is going to be. this prof gives notoriously tough exams and he had given us some ideas of what it would be, but i looked online yesterday and he has actually posted the real specifications and instructions for the exam.

it will consist of 20 short answer and 2 essays. in 3 hours. nothing he had said in class made it sound like it was going to be that awful. plus, i don't think i had ever stopped to think about it yet and to realize just how awful this would be.

i have two primary problems with this.

(1) well this is just too damned much to do in 3 hours. i think this is generally true, but particularly so for me. as i have mentioned before, generally, during an exam, i try to teach myself the relevant law. well with this many questions, 3 hours will not give me any time to rifle thru my notes and thru the Copyright Act to try to figure anything out. i had an exam that also had short answers last week and that class was notoriously easy and i still had to spend like 10 minutes with each question, flipping thru the rule book to find things and read them 8 times before committing to a "yes" or "no" answer. so basically, i'm screwed.

(2) i will have no time to twirl my hair. much like the LLMs need an extra 20 minutes of testing time per hour of test, i need approximately 3 minutes of hair twirling time for every 15 minutes of exam. this is a highly scientific formula i have worked out. the only way i can think of to get around this is for me to shave my head before the exam. but i figure that then i would just wind up petting my own head for an equivalent period of time, if not more b/c of the novelty of it. plus, it is probably not good to start work in a week with a shaved head.

there is disaster written all over this.

this morning's exam

i may as well have just drooled on a sheet of paper for 3 hours. i have yet to figure out how i can be so prepared for an exam and then have nothing worthwhile to say. it’s like i sit down and i think, well i can’t answer this! like i kinda know some things about these words that you mention here on this page, but i don’t have any way to make them into an answer to this question you’re asking. why couldn’t you have given that exam you gave in 2003? i could have answered that! but the fact of the matter is that if i had had that exam, i wouldn’t have had anything to say either. oh, and there may be things that are worthwhile scattered thru/o my exam. those are instantly recognizable as the things i got from all those law review articles i was reading last night. they’re even more recognizable b/c not only do they sound (maybe) moderately intelligent, but they answer the question even less than the rest of the crap i wrote.

just one more to go.

no idea what to do with myself right now

so i took an exam this morning and everyone i know is taking one right now, tho that shouldn't really have any effect on the fact that i cannot at all figure out what to do with myself right now. i thought about getting a movie from the library and watching it on my computer, but then that seemed kinda silly and maybe i should just go home if that's what i was going to do, but then there would be no chance of my doing anything productive, and then i realized that i should work anyways, since i am going to take the night off, but then i came up here to do some work and i am not really in the mood to do work, and maybe i should go to hallmark to buy mother's day cards but i don't really feel like doing that either and i'm also kinda hungry, but i have dinner plans, tho i suppose that those aren't for another 4 hours and oooooooh, it is very difficult being me. what to do with myself. what to do with myself. blah.

aren't you glad i posted this?

i am now going to immediately put up another 4 posts. about things that are just as inane. which shouldn't come as any surprise.

can it be procrastination if you're not doing anything productive?

so as i was leaving the library for the night, having concluded that i am not going to learn any more copyright law without the aid of a hornbook, i noticed that the recycling bins in the library were full, so that they were overflowing and on the ground and generally making a mess. which makes sense since they are the only two recycling bins in the library, which is where we all spend all of our time during finals, fueling ourselves with beverages that come in recyclable cans and bottles. and i am pleased to see that we are such a recycling-conscious campus, even if it can get a bit messy at times.

anyways. i figured that since there are 4 recycling bins lurking outside the little classrooms at the end of the hall where no one spends much time at all during finals, they would be empty. which they were. so i took one into the library and filled it up with the overflow and moved it back to its original spot and then moved another to the library for future recyclers to utilize w/o having to resort to the ground.

anyways, the point of this all is that molly said this was a desperate attempt at procrastination. but, if i was leaving the library, with no intention of doing anything else productive tonight, can it really be procrastination? i say no. really i just thought it made sense to clean it up. i'm kinda wishing i had done the same thing with the paper products which are overtaking the library's computer lab, when there are other places to recycle white paper around the school. tho i suppose that at least white paper is less messy. and it is relegated to the corner of a small room, so at least it's mostly out of the way.

that is all.

typer shark

be warned. it is out there.

a game, where you go deep sea diving and have to type the words on the sharks approaching, as quickly and accurately as you can, to make the sharks disappear before they eat you.

now i can see why you might use this as a device to teach kids how to type.

but why would you pretend it was a game? for everyday use? (no doubt i'm back playing before the week is up.)

i waste my time doing this shit, so you don't have to

the other day i was going to say that the great thing about being friends with me is that i can help you play games like chuzzle, when you visit for the first time and need someone to show you the ropes.

but an even better reason to keep me around is that i can weed out the crap for you.

the other day, i found a couple of truly horrendous games on yahoo games. what you have to keep in mind is that i am actually too stupid to find most games, let alone play them. i wouldn't have ever made it to yahoo games, but other people were, so that was easy. and then, i decided to foray into games that i hadn't necessarily seen other people playing. well, this is further complicated by the fact that you have to pay for some of these games. and i refuse to. maybe that's why i'm only playing crappy games. i found a couple the other day that were so horrible, and this could be an entertaining story of why they were so horrible, except i can't remember and all i know is that i thought that if a game was so bad i thought it should never be played again, well that's when you know your game is bad.

and just now i have discovered "fish tycoon." i don't generally understand the point of video games where you do things. but i understand that other people like them and that makes enough sense to me, if you're going to play sports or build cities or whatever these things are that people do in these games i don't play. well, "fish tycoon" involves a concept i don't understand at all. you raise fish. you dump some eggs in the tank, then you have baby fish, and you feed them, and then you have to mate them (at all points prodded along by the little bubble that keeps popping up to tell you what to do. i understand the point of the bubble. no one will ever play this game twice. no one playing this game will ever know what to do.) anyways, then i guess you continue to raise and breed the fish and sell them and then you have money to go shop in some fish store. LAME-O! but my favorite was the little bubble that popped up and explained to me that this game takes place in real time. i will be raising fish in real time. how awful does that sound? come to think of it, i don't think there's any way that's true, but i turned it off so fast that maybe it was.

anyways, that game sucks. don't play it. also, don't refer to it as a game. refer to it as a "game." that seems far more appropriate. use a mocking tone, if possible.

things i found in my notes this semester

So, frightening as it is, sometimes my friends relied on me for notes this semester. That fact is evident in the notes I take. The first example is from Mass Torts, 9am the day after the Libel Show's opening night. Truly, I took notes for 15 people. I titled the word doc I mailed out "MT notes for your drunk asses." At lunch today, a friend alerted me to her favorite note from that day--

• and then we talk some more about if we like this or not. But I’ve got email to reply to. And you didn’t show up anyways, so you can’t really give me a hard time. And after like 15 minutes, KF says that the whole thing is irrelevant.

In the email, I also explained to them, "there was waaaayyy less note taking than usual b/c there was lots of chatter about how we feel and what we think. i don’t take that shit down. and it involved lots of waving hands. i know how we love waving hands." And it's the truth, I don't take notes when we talk about what we think. And hypos. Don't take notes on those either. The problem? These are exactly the things on which exams are premised. Oooooh well.

But worse than that one example is the fact that an entire group of us relied on me for PR notes for half the semester. Somehow, my enthusiasm waned after that. But in the time I took the notes, I made sure everyone remembered that I knew I was doing this for them.

• How much information is covered by the privilege? (I think, you people kept IMing me. I’m sure it wasn’t crucial)
• what about loyalty? OK, well I’ve missed some stuff b/c of Rudy’s email and Anthony’s computer screen. Blame yourselves, jerks.
• Rule 1.7, comment 24—the new comment is a bit confusing. Seems to go two ways. And I didn’t exactly get what it says, but you’re literate, go read it.

And then there's the note that I just like cuz I think it's funny.

• well now we’ve already got a problem b/c lawyer BigMouth told Jill about the confidential info.

why study when you can just screw around on the internet?

which is what i seem to be doing.

so, first of all. i seem to be in a heated shouting match with one of my best friends via blog comments. how sad is that? but knowing that the behavior in which i am engaged is stupid has never deterred me from my course of action.

secondly is ryan's blog. so i became aware of ryan's blog when he and lexi started a blog war of sorts, but then i became kind of addicted to it. the thing about it is that ryan's blog makes me sad. i mean, i enjoy it and all and i can't help but go back for more, and i want to know the next story, but well--i'm kinda concerned. (i say this knowing full well that this is probably going to get back to all the players. but you would have to admit that it is kinda concerning. i'm not the only one who thinks this.) but i would also have to say that ryan's blog has brought some great stuff to my attention. or at least fascinating stuff. so i am going to focus on those for right now, b/c i have spent me some time on the internet and i think there is merit to them.

the first is the bubba keg. as ryan points out, this is perfect for foxfields. as jen points out, if we buy in bulk, we get a discount! i do love me a discount. plus, i figure this is perfect as we should each have our own. BYObubba keg to foxfields. this is actually not sarcasm. rob only wants one if we can get something emblazoned on the side. i think they should all be personalized, like with our pictures. i don't want to drink from rob's bubba keg. god knows what will be in there. mine will be full of mint julep. i may need a second one for bloody marys. it will be our 3L year after all. anyways, i want me a bubba keg.

after having looked further into the bubba keg, i decided it was time to investigate the chuggler, a device mentioned in an earlier post. i'll be honest, i didn't understand how a mug could also be a funnel. well now i know! even looking at the picture didn't make it clear (i'm a little slow), but there is a video! a video for god's sake! so now it all makes sense to me. but i don't think the video was my favorite part of the site. i think my favorite part of the site is the disclaimer that says “not to be used with alcoholic beverages.” except the whole page is about parties, its suggested gift uses are for football parties and college freshmen, and the page is full of pictures from what is clearly spring break. i bet those girls are chugging 30 ounces of diet coke in 1.75 seconds in their wet t-shirts! that is so hardcore.

anyways, that is all for now. at some point i need to start looking into the law.

the answer

i know you have all been waiting with baited breath as to whether chuzzle is a game of skill or not. so i have been performing further studies. the answer is that chuzzle is a game of no skill. after having played many, many hours of it, i don't think it's even a game with a point. i could answer these questions conclusively, but i have been unable to find an explanation of the scoring procedure. but so far as i can tell, there are no limitations. it's not like you need to move quickly, and it's not like making fewer moves is better. pretty indicative of a game involving no skill. and the levels don't get harder as you advance. and the mops appear out of nowhere, meaning that sometimes you'll have really big explosions of mops, but you won't have been able to plan for that b/c it is completely arbitrary based on what fell out of the sky. and it only ends when there are no more moves to make. which seems to be pretty random too, based on how little control you have over what is on the screen. generally one realizes she has been playing for 6 hours and it is now 3am and she has finals to study for and she had better turn off her computer. or on the one or two occassions on which the computer has told her that her game is over, there is no sense of disappointment. b/c in no way is this a personal shortcoming about your chuzzle skills. really, it's more like, "thank god."

which brings me to another point. it is really way to easy to just click the button that says, "yes, i'll play again and waste more time." i think you should have to go thru a maze or something b/f they let you do that.

oh, another point. the little "mops" may not be mops. they kinda look different at different times. they're not different, but i see different things. now they look like something embroidered on a shirt. i can't explain that, but if you saw them, and looked at them for a while, you would know what i was talking about.

you think i would quit playing, but i think i'll go play another game now. i'm taking today to "study at home." it's going to be trouble.

improvement?

do you think that getting better at something means that there is necessarily some skill involved? b/c i am getting better at chuzzle. by leaps and bounds. but i believe this is just a) luck, b) being more accustomed to the game. i still, however, have not finished outlining the final fourth of the syllabus for admin law. i was going to do it when i got home, but maybe now that i've played over an hour of chuzzle, i'll just do it in the morning.